Saturday, 11 July 2015

MAKE FUNNY OF MRT BREAKDOWN, NOT FUNNY AT ALL

There is a guy whose moniker Veron Rahim, who could possibly be the blogger behind "anyhowhamtam" posted this :

"Pretty funny to see the PAP fanboys at Fap and other pages falling over themselves trying to deflect blame for yesterday's wonderful experience by SMRT.

Even funnier is how they seem to equate every Govt agency with themselves that they are compelled to issue statements on their behalf."

Since yesterday's serious train breakdown, potshots against government and SMRT were all over social media.

There is also no denial that FAP FLOPs were quick to swing into action defending government positions and forming a wall to cushion the volleys of potshots.

What is more funny to me is, a person like Veron Rahim who may be some literary award winner joining the fray of cheap and lowly tit-for-tats with street kids (me included).

Departing from these meaningless, unhelpful comments trying to gain political coins, there maybe be the real issues that we need confront.

I have this uneasy feeling that the train breakdown cannot be resolved at all. If my guesses are true, it is a big big problem that the current way of doing patches won't make the problem go away. Experts and non-experts alike will demand technical evidence to what I have just said, and I have none. It is just gut feeling.

But I felt what is most important for Singaporeans and those charged with the running of Singapore's train system including the minister's office to realize a sense of reality.

We can make comparison with systems elsewhere, Hong Kong, Tokyo, London etc etc We are not the same, and we cannot be the same. We have to look at the problem in our very own context.

Are we prepared to face with the reality that the entire train system cannot operate as though it is fresh from the mint? Are we prepared to accept that to get the train system to function as though it is freshly minted, we have to tear down everything and redo it all over from scratch? These are two pertinent question to ponder seriously. The Singapore government fortunately has the ability to do that, fiscally.

Meanwhile, it would be absolutely unrealistic, and that is why I am calling for a realization of a sense of reality that those charged with running the system not to make promises that the train system will run with the efficiency like freshly minted ones. Promising the sky is hard to reach. Raising expectations only to face backlashes when expectations cannot be met.

And for Singaporeans, we may have to live with occasional breakdowns as in a way we are living with viruses and diseases that may outbreak anytime. Train breaking down is not the end of the world, and not everything are attributed to human errors. Yes we want efficient government and we want efficient public services. We can ask for, in fact demand tip top performance, but there will be time where tip top performance cannot produce the outcome we desire.

We can only promise what we can deliver, that we will do our very best and we cannot expect more than what realistically can.